From the Critics

'Turn your eyes, reader, to any one composition that bears the name of
Liszt if you are unlucky enough to have such a thing on your pianoforte
and answer frankly, when you have examined it, if it contains one bar of
genuine music. Composition indeed! - decomposition is the proper word for
such hateful fungi which choke up and poison the fertile plains of
harmony, threatening the world with drowth - the world that pants for "the
music which is divine" and can only slake its burning thirst at the
"silver fountains" of genuine, flowing melody - melody,
yes, melody, absolute melody.'

- James William Davison, Musical World, London June 30th 1855
[Davison, the notorious 'music monster' of Charles Reid's biography (1984),
was the Times Music Critic, 1846-78, and Editor of the Musical
World, 1843-c 1880]